When They Were Younger
by SicTransitGloria
Summary: A miniseries describing Rogue, Bobby, and John's lives before and after arriving at the mansion, and how their relationship was formed.


Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with the folks at Marvel, Twentieth Century Fox, Bryan Singer, Aaron Stanford, yada yada yada.

A/N: This is sort of a miniseries focusing on how Pyro, Rogue, and Bobby all ended up together at Xavier's and how they form the relationship they have. Possible hints of Ryro because why the hell not. Reviews appreciated, critical or otherwise.

Chapter One: Pyro

The first time he dreamt of fire, John Allderdyce was eleven years old. He dreamt a searing orange monster was clawing its way up his arm, his legs, engulfing him, and he woke up screaming. This was back when his parents still came running in to see what was wrong, terrified for their little boy. Back when they were still scared _for _him, not _of _him.

You see, John didn't always love fire, the way it moved, the different colors, how it was never the same fire from one second to the next. Before he adopted the name of his condition, he hated fire, was terrified of it.

When he was younger, the same aspects of fire that taught him to love it made him cringe at the very thought of it: its unpredictability, the fact that it couldn't be controlled or manipulated, the sheer _heat _of it, the danger. When he was younger, John was afraid of a lot.

John lived in an old house by the edge of the woods with his parents. His room was blue, and on a shelf he kept a collection of model airplanes. Above his bed, there was a decorative plaque that read: "**John**: '_God is gracious'." _The plaque had been a gift to Mr. and Mrs. Allderdyce from Father Moore at their parish. The name had been a gift to little Johnny from his parents, both meaning the same thing – a reminder that all that they and he had was a gift from God. To his parents, John was gift from God and they were thankful for him every day.

One day when he was five, Johnny came inside from playing, covered in dirt and grass stains. His mother had laughingly scolded him – she always indulged the boy a little more than she should have, as her husband liked to point out – and had begun to wipe off the grime from his face. But when she touched her son's cheek she was horror-struck. He was burning up. He didn't look flushed or ill, but his skin felt as if he had over a one hundred degree fever. She shouted for her husband, and Mr. Allderdyce came running in from his baseball game to find his wife in a panic, yelling that Johnny was sick, that he needed to see a doctor right away.

At the Urgent Care center of the hospital, a doctor gave Johnny a full check-up and ran tests for every bug that was currently in circulation among younger children in the area, mostly to appease the boy's clearly distraught mother. Finally, he pronounced that Johnny was fine, he merely had a higher body temperature. Ninety-eight point six was just an average, he had assured them, some people ran hot. The Allderdyces went home feeling much relieved.

At school, things were hard. A lot of the other kids just didn't take to Johnny, and shied away from him at recess and lunch. He would come home confused and angry, and would spend hours out in the woods outside the house playing with his airplanes by himself. They just didn't know him yet, his mother would tell him, they just needed time. They would come around eventually. But they never did.

That first night when he was eleven, John had spent the whole day hiding from Ruben Cafield, who had decided that he didn't like John's face. The next day it seemed like fire was following him everywhere, he kept noticing it in places he never had before. The glow at the tip of a cigarette or cigar being smoked by someone on the street. The ovens at the cafeteria. The burners on the stove. The candles on the dining room table. More than that, it seemed like the flames were trying to get closer to him. At dinner, he could have sworn the candle flames looked like they were being pulled towards him, teasing him, threatening him. From that day on, John was constantly on alert, aware, almost paranoid of any fire that got within his line of vision.

The second time he had the dream, he was thirteen. This time, the fiery beast was trying to devour his whole body. He could feel the heat of the white-hot tongues against his skin. He woke up, drenched in sweat and shuddering, and took a freezing cold shower, still trying to put out the imaginary flames. But try as he might, he couldn't get the burning sensation off of his skin.

The next day at school he broke Ruben Cafield's arm in two places, and people began to look differently at John Allderdyce.

Mr. and Mrs. Aldderdyce weren't really worried then. They figured that this was just the Rebellious Phase. He would grow out of it. If they could just be understanding, be firm yet supportive, this would pass and they would have their little Johnny back. But the phase didn't pass, and looking back the neighbors all agreed that they should have seen it coming.

The third time, he was sixteen. He dreamed a solid wall of brilliant orange fire had sprung up around him, pinning him in place, choking him, smothering him, burning him, about to leave him a pile of John-colored ash at any moment. When he woke up, he tried to convince himself it was just the remainders of a hangover, and that maybe he should lay off the tequila for while. But he kept seeing things in infra red, like a spy camera, viewing everything in terms of heat. He stumbled down the stairs to the kitchen, where he saw his mother and the stovetop glowing bright orange, and everything else in varying shades of red and blue. He blinked and it was gone. John said good morning to his mom, made a beeline for the liquor cabinet, took two gulps of vodka, and went back upstairs to bed. After much shouting on his part and crying on hers, Mr. and Mrs. Allderdyce decided to try therapy.

The most the cool-voiced doctor was able to get out of the dark eyed teenager hunched in the chair across from him was several "fuck you"s, a few "fuck them"s, the fact that it was John not Johnny, and that no, John not Johnny did not fucking like school for reasons that should have been fucking obvious and that he did not need to see a fucking shrink. When John not Johnny was asked to "draw a picture of his feelings", he took the piece of paper he was handed and carefully covered every square inch in orange marker before tearing it into haphazard pieces and letting them fall like leaves on the psychiatrist's desk. The doctor asked him to draw a picture of his feelings each night, and then bring them to his next appointment.

The next week, John brought in a ziplock bag full of paper ashes and placed them on the desk. The doctor prescribed antidepressants. John discovered The Wonderful World of Recreational Drug use. Mr. and Mrs. Allderdyce began to panic.

At his school by the edge of his New York suburb (although the traditional term brought to mind attractive, cookie-cutter houses and hedges that had no place anywhere near John's neighborhood) John had become a household name, usually followed with adjectives like "hot" (from the girls), "bad news" (from the students who were generous), and "psycho" (from those who were not). On the days when he did come to school, which were growing fewer and father between, John often ended up getting temporarily suspended anyway, which suited him just fine. He would go home and get drunk or high or both in his bedroom on whatever happened to be closest. The best you could say about his personal wellness plan was "At least he doesn't smoke!" and smile cheerfully, something his mother had gotten very good at. Because he never smoked. Ever. That would require a lighter and thus flame and the one time he had tried it, his pyrophobia paired with the effects of his meds sent him running around his driveway naked at three in the morning.

But for all that his longest run in school without suspension was down to two weeks, John's grades really weren't that bad. People mistook the attitude and attendance record for stupidity. John was anything but. While he was failing Math spectacularly, his English and History grades remained in the B-range, and among the wreckage of Health & Science and Home Ec., his Art grade stood at a shining, luminous A. Mr. Collins, his art teacher said that John was one of the most promising students he had had in years – you know, when he came to class. His mother was very proud. His father muttered something about only pussies majoring in finger painting, but beggars really couldn't be choosers.

Mrs. Allderdyce had been right, to some degree – people _did _warm up to John, so to speak. At least some of them. Sort of. Girls knew John as someone with experience and no commitments, which was quite appealing to quite a few people. Drug dealers knew John as a buyer and seller of anything that wasn't pot. The local tough guys saw fighting Crazy John Allderdyce as a sort of rite of passage, and the village idiots saw him as a possible addition to their collection of big strong friends who could protect them. As for the teachers, well, young Mr. Allderdyce could be damn charming when he wanted to be, which was usually confined to talks about missing assignments and the threat of expulsion. He probably would have dropped out, except that it would've broken his mother's heart.

He was still sixteen the night it happened, when he had _that _dream, the one that finally made it all clear, the one that set the blazing downward spiral into effect. His parents were at church, the Saturday evening service. It was fall, the last warm breezes of summer still clinging to the house. At almost eleven, the sky was dark, shadows creeping along the rooms and hallways of the house, seeming to slink right up the floorboards to the frame of John's bed, where he was sweating and thrashing and calling out and still completely asleep.

In the dream, he was standing in the midst of a sea of fire, a great roaring monstrosity that was consuming everything in existence, burning the whole world. He was screaming, crying, praying to a God his parents' devotion to had long since robbed him of any actual faith in. He was offering up his life, his soul, anything to just please please please make it stop. But it didn't stop. That was one thing he learned that night: fire stopped for nothing and no one. Fire was fire, and it didn't give a fuck.

The flames were eating his entire body, burning off his clothes, until just skin remained against the hellish heat. The _heat_. He thought he was going to die, thought he maybe already had and that now this was his own personal niche of hell. But in the vaguest corner of his mind, he began to register that his skin was still intact, that he was still whole, but the _heat, _oh God, he was sure just the heat alone was going to leave him insane. But then a miracle happened: he woke up.

John fell out of bed, panting, shouting, beating at the fire he could still feel all over his body. Clutching his head, he went careening along the hallway, down the stairs to the kitchen and clawed open the liquor cabinet, skin shining with perspiration, desperate for something, anything to make it stop. He tried to open the top of a glass bottle, but his fingers were slick with sweat and clumsy from terror and sleep. He tried, tried so hard to get it open and find sweet oblivion, but the glass persisted, letting him see the liquid inside but not get to it. So he broke the damn thing open, bringing the neck of the bottle down across the kitchen table. But there, in the very center of the tablecloth, were the candles from dinner, still lit and mocking him, the tiny flames leaning towards him like branches in the wind. Suddenly, John felt an overwhelming, irrational rage bubbling up inside him, a hatred, a knowledge that the fire, _the fire_ had done this to him. He swiped out at the candles sticks, knocking them over, but his bloodshot, hazy eyes misjudged and the candles fell onto the waiting puddle of alcohol. For a moment, the scene was frozen before him in a beautifully macabre still-life, the tiny candle flames millimeters above the split liquor, and John, hands outstretched, a look somewhere between amazement, disbelief, and horror painted on his features. Then the one of the candles flickered and the inferno was released.

It was like he had fallen into his dreams in succession. The fire was bright orange, but John saw it as an almost white-hot yellow as it lashes out with almost unnatural aim – _aim? _– and slithered up his waiting arm. Only then did John scream...and scream…and scream. The fire seemed to wrap around his whole body and he knew that this was what it had come to, what the dreams had meant, what the paranoia had _really _meant. This was how he was going to die. He didn't know why or how, but somehow God or Satan or nature or just shitty luck had picked him out, marked him, stalked him, and it had all been leading to this. But as he was wondering how much it would hurt to be burned to death it suddenly occurred to the parts of his mind that still functioned that it _didn't _hurt. It was hot, yes, unbelievably, almost – _almost - _unbearably so, but he wasn't being burned. He had heard that being burnt to death only hurt for a little while, that once your nerves were gone you didn't register pain anymore. You usually died from smoke inhalation first, anyway. Wondering if his nerves were gone, John looked down at his hand – but he saw only smooth, unmarked skin. He raised his other hand. The same. Frantically, he looked at his whole body only to see more whole, undamaged skin. The flames still didn't hurt, in fact they felt almost…good. In fact, it didn't feel like the fire was hurting him at all, it felt more like…a caress. The fire was snaking over his whole body, touching him gently, passionately, _tenderly_ – like a lover. The fire _loved _him. It wanted to be near him, to touch him, to be touched by him. The fire wanted him to love it back. John closed his eyes, and let the feeling of it wash over him – and then his parents' screams drowned out everything else from his mind.

John put out the fire. He wasn't sure how. He just remembered wanting the fire to be gone and then it was. It slid off his body like water, back across the table to the wicks of the candles and went out, leaving only two tiny wisps of silver smoke. Mrs. Allderdyce called 911. Mr. Allderdyce called Father Moore.

John had tried to explain, had pleaded with his parents that it was just a mistake, that he didn't know what had happened, that he wouldn't do it again, he promised, he _promised_, but they would hear none of it. He had grabbed onto his father's arm, and said that maybe this wasn't a bad thing, maybe this was really just a gift from God, maybe – but he never finished the sentiment. He father's hand came down hard and accurately across John's face. His teeth rattled in his head from the impact and he stumbled to the floor at his father's feet. He stared up at the man he had spent his life idolizing, his cheek and jaw already purpling. John, his hand held over where his father's had been in disbelief, looked over to his tiny, meek, chronically frightened mother and nauseating realization clicked in his mind.

Father Moore was at the Allderdyce's home by one, after the fire truck and ambulance had left, declaring it a false alarm. A cooking pan had caught fire briefly and his wife had panicked, Mr. Allderdyce explained. Her nerves, of course, a long day, a simple mistake, but no cause for alarm. He left John in the living room, the imprint of his father's hand growing across his face, the sensation of fire still on his skin.

Father Moore came in, a collared silhouette against the doorframe. Mr. and Mrs. Allderdyce told the story of what had happened, Mrs. Allderdyce frequently stopping to stifle a sob, Mr. Allderdyce with an eerily steady voice. Father Moor asked to see Johnny.

Kneeling in front of him in the living room, his sharp eyes never leaving John's vacant ones, Father Moore took out a book of matches and slowly, so slowly, lit one. Could Johnny show him, he asked, show him what he had done in the kitchen. John, too dazed to think better of it, touched the meager flame and let it crawl up his fingers like a long-lost pet, sticking to him like cloth to wet skin. Father Moore mumbled a prayer and Mrs. Allderdyce started crying again from the doorway. John looked up at them all, then at the fire in his hand, and he realized that it wasn't the fire he should have been afraid of all this time.

The following week (weeks? He couldn't say) was blur. A haze of his mother's tear-stained face, a boot against his ribs, hunger, the sound of sobbing behind closed doors, his father's fist and the back of his hand making purple and red mosaics across his skin, the droning of Father Moore's prayers, and the endless sound of hushed voices. He could only catch snippets of their conversations, but they were enough. "Demon" _slamming doors_ "Satan" _breaking dishes_ "possessed" _his father's booming voice_ "help" _his mother's quiet whimpering outside his door_ "my boy, my boy, my baby." John the Baptist had had to suffer, too, Father Moore had explained the night they tied him to a chair in the kitchen where it had all begun, but his reward had been great in heaven. We only suffer to discover God, he had assured him. They were going to drive it out of him, he explained, the demon, the rogue in John's DNA that had damned him in the father's, in _his _father's eyes.

But as the praying began, they made one fatal mistake. They lit three candles around the chair where he was tied. They didn't think it would matter, thought they were safe. After all, the candles represented the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This was a matter of the divine.

But it wasn't. It was a matter of science and freak genomes and chance and love and hate and betrayal and they gave John Allderdyce all he needed to put an end to it.

The fire shot from the candles, growing by the second. They launched themselves greedily at John, gnawing through his restraints, clinging to him, embracing him, accepting him. The flames spread out from him, catching hold of the wallpaper, windows, chairs. He felt the possibility that fire represented, the endless possibilities of what he could do. There was another John in the Bible, and he had foretold the end of the world. John Allderdyce could be the one to see it through. He could set the whole fucking world ablaze.

But he hesitated. Just for a moment. He looked across the room that was glowing orange and red, to the three figures huddled in the corner. He looked from one face to another and saw the same thing mirrored in each – fear. Father Moore, his father…his mother. Despite the furnace-like heat, John felt something inside himself go cold. He wasted no eloquence in expressing his last feelings towards them, then he turned and walked out the door, the fire still clinging to him.

He walked slowly down the sidewalk, the house he had grown up in ablaze, a white heat in the back of his vision. Heedless, with no thought to the past or the future, he walked into the night, and John Allderdyce wasn't afraid of anything.


End file.
